


Mirror Mirror

by x_los



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M, Mirror Sex, Mirrors, Rimming, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 07:50:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5577291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was the sort of arrangement of convenience where Avon worked hard to hold himself at a remove from Blake... It was apparently also the sort of arrangement of convenience where Blake wanted to fuck him while watching Avon’s inevitably stupid expressions in a bloody great mirror."</p><p>In the course of indulging a whim, Blake and Avon are forced to view their shore-leave assignations from a different angle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by Aralias, first reader Elviaprose

Blake introduced the subject of mirrors several months into their time on Liberator.

It was a shore leave: they only slept together on shore leaves. This irritated Avon, and it irritated him all the more because he knew it was at least in part his own fault. On their first night aboard the ship, Blake had moved to touch him. This wasn’t entirely unexpected: they had fucked on the London on a few occasions. But Avon, still shaken by the Liberator’s psychic attack and their narrow escape from the prison ship, irritable, and worried about Blake’s plan to hit Cygnus Alpha, had made a caustic remark—he couldn’t remember just what. Something along the lines of, “Ah, but won’t you need all your energy and attention for your precious revolution, and the difficult feat of keeping us all alive?”

He did, however, remember Blake’s response perfectly. “All right, we’ll save it for planetfalls. I assume we will need leave, on occasion. Drop by then, if you’re interested.” And Avon couldn’t take it back, couldn’t say he hadn’t meant it. Besides, he hadn’t even been _sure_ whether Blake had acceded to pay lip-service to Avon’s boundaries, which he carelessly ripped down in other spheres. Perhaps Blake really _did_ want to devote himself that entirely to his work, now he thought better of it (but could have been talked round to spending his time in a more well-rounded manner, if Avon had been amenable). Or possibly he wanted Avon that _little,_ that _infrequently_. Or perhaps Blake was attempting to hide the ‘relationship’, such as it was, from the others for some reason—

No, that was unfair. Everyone knew, after all, that they’d slept together a few times on the London. It hadn’t been a particularly private place, and neither he nor Blake had been particularly discreet—they’d had reasons to want to deter other suitors. Cally hadn’t even been on the prison ship, and Avon happened to know that even _she_ knew.  A few days after her arrival he’d come almost onto the flight deck, but stopped in the corridor when he’d heard Cally say,

“Are they an item, then?” Unless Cally was keeping abreast of galactic celebrity gossip, there were only so many people she could be referring to.

“Million credit question,” Vila had snorted.

“Whether they are, or whether they would describe themselves as such?” Cally asked.

“Both. Either.” Vila shrugged. “I know they shagged on the London—dunno if they still do, or if less desperate times and all that. Certainly not shagging anyone else, either of them.”

“Maybe Blake’s quiet about it, to avoid the appearance of favoritism,” Jenna suggested.

Vila seemed taken aback. “Call that preferential treatment?”

“I don’t know,” Jenna said thoughtfully. “Ultimately, maybe I would. God knows they have each other’s attention.”

Well, Avon thought bitterly, Blake at least had his. He’d made quite a loud entrance to stop the conversation, and had then hung around on the flight deck to keep it stopped. The question of whether he and Blake were ‘together’ or not was rather a sore spot with him, and he didn’t like the idea of their discussing it. And after all, he didn’t really know the answer, so why should they?

He made a point of not clamoring for shore leaves like Vila and Cally—most of the time. On some occasions he found himself arguing hard, supporting one or the other of them perhaps more than he should.

 _Does it look like begging?_ he wondered.

 ** _Is_** _it begging?_ he wondered when he was feeling less than generous with himself. Because he couldn’t help immediately heading to the room Blake was staying in when he came down to the planet, every shore leave. They didn’t see any of the others.  Avon ordered in food to preempt their having to leave the room. He couldn’t help being furious if Blake so much as went out to eat first, or to run some errand (Blake knew better now: he was usually waiting, when Avon came down). If Blake, tired by their regular work as he was, didn’t want his shore leaves to consist of exhausting sex marathons, well, that was too bad, wasn’t it.

When Blake had guard duty back on the Liberator, Avon seldom bothered staying on the planet—what would have been the point? Yes, some of the worlds had natural or cultural attractions, and he knew from the brochures scattered across their room that Blake, independent and self-reliant, took these in when Avon had a teleport duty shift. But Avon didn’t precisely like the thought of anticipating or retracing Blake’s steps, pathetically seeing the sights alone, with no one to comment on them to. He might have considered going with Blake, if Blake asked him. But Blake didn’t ask him. Besides, given that he only had Blake for the duration of shore leaves, Avon knew very well that he wanted to see Blake, breathing hard under him, coming and wrecked, far more than he wanted to see the three-tiered gorges of Cenbok 9 or anything like them.

In typical Blake fashion, he introduced the matter of mirrors not by talking about it, but simply by making it happen. Blake always booked the room. So either he didn’t choose thoughtfully (which Avon didn’t like to think about), or he _did_ , and thus Blake had _intended_ to get _this_ room, with its gigantic mirror opposite the large bed.

So Blake thought that would be interesting, did he?

The first occasion on which they’d fucked, Avon had actually been in the process of being propositioned by someone else. A large, belligerent Beta on the London hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer. Avon had been annoyed at the inconvenience and quite ready to give the man an unpleasant surprise. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but he knew himself to be possessed of determination and viciousness sufficient to see him through. He didn’t feel at risk. This man wanted to bully him into compliance, and had failed to understand that Avon had never yet been so worked upon.

Blake had interrupted the proceedings shortly before actual violence erupted.  Blake had put a heavy, uncongenial hand on the other man’s shoulder, and squeezed meaningfully.

“There’s quite a few of us who wouldn’t take kindly to anything nonconsensual happening on this ship,” Blake said, in a pleasant voice that barely covered a core of steel. “To him, or to anyone else. Find a friend who likes you back.”

“Good advice,” Avon added with a thin smile. “I’m not a particularly friendly person.”

“Who asked you?” the Beta growled at Blake.

“Oh, no one,” Blake admitted, dropping his hand. “Which is exactly who you’re going to bother from now on, _unless_ they don’t mind being bothered. I think we understand each other.”

The man looked from Blake to the glittering, amused challenge in Avon’s eyes and thought the better of it.

“I could have handled that,” Avon said to Blake as the man slunk away sullenly.

“Mm,” Blake nodded, bringing a hand to his mouth. “Yes, I know you could’ve. But maybe the next person he was going to try it on with _wouldn’t_ have been able to. To act as a general deterrent to that sort of thing, we need to get across that it’s not acceptable to the prisoners themselves, no exceptions. The guards won’t lift a finger to help us—Raiker already tried it on himself with Jenna. Positively threatened her. Interfering when that one started with his first choice seemed the best option—you saw how he sized us both up and left it at that. And if it _had_ come to a fight, you’d have backed me.”

Avon gave him an unpleasant smile. “You assume too much.”

“No,” Blake shook his head, “no, I don’t think so. If I’d interfered on your behalf and he’d taken a swing at me for it, you’d have used the opening to stab him in the back. Or the nearest thing you could manage, without access to anything with sharp edges. You’d have considered it beneath your dignity to leave me to fend for myself _. I_ think you don’t like to owe anyone anything.”

“Possibly,” Avon said, narrowing his eyes. When, precisely, had Roj Blake, famous political prisoner and general interesting specimen in this fishbowl of a prison ship, been watching _him?_ And how had he missed it, given that he’d spent not a little time watching Blake? Blake, whose politician’s voice cut through the banal conversation between convicts like a surgical scalpel, whose defiance was so obvious that even the dimmest of the guards saw it and resented him for it, who seemed to be planning _something_. Yes, Avon had been watching him very carefully. Blake was the most intriguing, attractive man Avon had met for a while—a while which included a span during which he’d had access to domes teeming with millions of people, not simply the little world of the London. Of course he watched Blake. He couldn’t help it, and it would have been foolish not to.

“I suppose I should offer you a reward for defending my virtue,” Avon said. “But I’m afraid I seem to have inadvertently left my credit chips behind, and I haven’t anything to bargain with, at present. Unless, of course, you want what he wanted.”

“No,” said Blake dryly, “I’m full up on rape at present, thanks all the same.”

“It wouldn’t be rape if I offered it to you as thanks, or by way of a bargain,” Avon pointed out fairly, enjoying the banter (and the possible flirtation).

“What if,” Blake said, still sounding casual, “you offered it to me— _not_ as thanks, or by way of any bargain? I think I could be quite interested in that. But only if you were.”

Avon fought not to react visibly. “Let me check my calendar,” he said silkily. 

That was how he’d wound up pinned  to the wall of a communal shower, being thoroughly kissed by the most intriguing, attractive man he’d met in a long, long while. He wasn’t quite ready yet to stretch it to ‘ever’. But if Blake plunged down, raking his hands down Avon’s sides, to violently, avariciously suck him off, like he was _starving,_ say—five more times, Avon thought he would _really_ be prepared to concede the point.

He was a little surprised when he heard himself say (shakily, in the aftermath),

“The shampoo would have to be biosafe, I think.”

Blake, still on his knees looking up at him, blinked at Avon, getting it.

“You’re interested in that?”

Avon had nodded brusquely. “After all, _you_ are still in need of attention.”

Blake laughed, breathlessly, and Avon stared as he licked a droplet of Avon’s come off his lower lip casually. Felt a strange flood of possessive tenderness.

“You make it sound like a serious injury,” Blake said.

“Well now,” Avon responded automatically, having felt Blake against him when they’d kissed at the start, “it’s hardly a little prick.”

Startled, Blake gave a loud, genuine laugh. Avon repressed a stupid urge to say, “Do it again.”

Thus Avon had ended up in the highly improbable position of letting the (former?) leader of the seditious Freedom Party sodomize him where anyone could walk in. It had been a species of madness. He hadn’t regretted it. Nor had he regretted the four other occasions, all less elaborate, on which he’d brought Blake off on the London (and the reverse—Blake was as determined to make Avon come along with him in bed or lack-thereof as he was anywhere else).

It had been an arrangement of convenience. And it was still an arrangement of convenience. It was the sort of arrangement of convenience where Avon worked hard to hold himself at a remove from Blake, to undermine the effects of his charisma. Because Blake wanted him on shore leaves, and not on the ship. Blake wanted his technical advice, but not his input on strategy. Blake gave himself not just to Avon, but to every dangerous claim on his life the universe could dredge up.  Blake would let Avon fuck him for days running, but never asked him to see a gorge or a museum or anything of himself but his public-relations front and his body in animal and blameless attitudes of need. Blake was warm and chummy and opened deeply for no one, yielded to nothing.  And Avon wouldn’t peer through the windows, scrabble at the walls. He wanted an invitation. And failing that, he’d ignore the matter as best he could. Which, he was sorry to say, wasn’t turning out to be very well at all.

It was apparently _also_ the sort of arrangement of convenience where Blake wanted to fuck him while watching Avon’s inevitably stupid expressions in a bloody great mirror.

“Don’t you think that’s a little gauche?” Avon asked wryly, stripping with practiced efficiency.

Blake shrugged off his own jacket. “Being able to see your face while I take you from behind and fuck you stupid? Not really, why?”

Avon rolled his eyes to disguise that he liked Blake talking about what they did together and might do together. Every finger-gnawing little plan of it—‘I was thinking we could––’, ‘Do you want to try––?’, ‘Did that work all right for you?’, ‘Now _that_ we should do again’.  Frank and conversational and almost incidentally possessive. Industrious—Blake worked hard to make this good for them.

“Far be it for _me_ to get in the way of any plan of _yours_.”

Blake laughed, but only a little—not the full laugh Avon could sometimes provoke from him, which sounded as though Blake were surprised and delighted that a world that had been so cruel to him and so many others could still have such luxuries as decent jokes in it.

“If you’re not comfortable with it—” Blake said. He sounded slightly hesitant, as he could be when he wanted something for himself rather than because he thought it was objectively correct. Avon cursed internally as he finished undressing, catching up with Blake.

“I’m not _entirely_ comfortable,” Avon offered. “Insofar as I’ve not done it before, and I—can’t imagine that seeing myself during will be particularly erotic. Awkward, more likely. I’m not a vain man—not in this respect, at any rate. But I’m also—interested. Not opposed. And, as I said—“

“—loathe to suspend any pleasure of mine,” Blake said with a nod, taking Avon’s hand and kissing the knuckles, meeting his eyes while he did it.

“Is that from something?” Avon asked.

Blake’s lip quirked. “Austen.” He tapped Avon’s knuckles against his lips and then let go of his hand. “Let’s try it, and if you don’t like it, we’ll throw a sheet over the thing for the rest of the leave. How’s that?”

Avon nodded. “All right.”

Blake sat on the bed, and Avon pushed him lightly to make him lay down and straddled him. Blake reached his hand up and pushed Avon’s hair out of his face. Blake looked concerned about something.

“What is it?” Avon asked. He could hear that his voice sounded sharp and irritable, and knew it was because Blake would say, “Nothing”, and press on briskly, and he hated not being allowed to know anything that bothered Blake beyond ship’s business and the angle they fucked at.

“Nothing,” Blake said, right on cue. Even his tone was the one Avon had known he’d use. Avon grit his teeth.

“Fine,” Avon said, his own voice carefully neutral. He felt a sudden, petulant urge to get on with it. If Blake didn’t want to talk, they wouldn’t talk. He swung off Blake and turned around,  facing the mirror, though not looking at it. Blake stroked Avon’s side, then paused.

“Are you upset about something?” Blake asked, and Avon frowned. He realized that while Blake couldn’t see his face from where he was lying (now propped up on an elbow), he _could_ still see the reflection of it. Avon hadn’t quite realized that at this angle, the mirror would catch his private expression of disquiet. That Blake could catch sight of it, out of the corner of his eye. Avon had monitored his voice, but not the sad set of his eyes. Quickly, he fixed that. He’d told Blake he’d try, but it was clear this wasn’t going to work. Not without modifications, anyway.

“I’ll do this if we trade,” Avon said. “It isn’t fair, after all, that I have no control over whatever embarrassing things my face does when I’m too busy having sex to keep a proper watch on it—whereas you mostly look dignified in extremis. That must frustrate your various torturers no end.”

They had, of course, had sex in positions where they could see one another’s faces well. But Avon expected that, distracted by Blake fucking deep into his arse, he’d forget exactly what it was Blake could see. When he was in a missionary position, inches from Blake’s face, it was inescapably clear what was going on, and he could thus keep some grip on himself.  Further, he suspected that what Blake had planned, the strangeness and embarrassment of seeing _himself_ , would eat away at his guard.

“I thought we didn’t do this by way of a bargain,” Blake said mildly, and Avon was—surprised Blake remembered that. Pleased, actually. Though he didn’t let himself make too much of it.

Avon smiled. “What if I offered you a present, and you offered me one?”

Blake lazily ran a hand over Avon’s back (Avon shivered a little), stopping to firmly grip his hip, fitting the bone into his hand. “The trouble is you’re a hard man to shop for. I never know what you want.”

“Just now,” Avon said, “I should like you to answer questions I put to you. To the best of your ability, of course. I’ll try not to be unreasonable.”

Unless he heard ‘nothing’ even once during the course of this experiment: then, he thought he might quite unreasonably beat Blake senseless.

“To the best of _your_ ability, of course,” Blake said, but his eyes were warm and there was no dislike in them, so Avon thought he could safely treat that as a joke between them, rather than one made at his expense.

“While you have _that_ ,” Avon nodded at the mirror, “I want _this_.”

“All right. I’ll try. Though,” Blake frowned a little, “I’m not in the habit of making a lot of disclosures of that sort, and I’m not sure how easy I’ll find it.”

“Whereas I’m so forthcoming,” Avon deadpanned—Blake laughed properly for him, this time. Then he shifted, coming to sit on his knees behind Avon. With his hands, Blake urged Avon’s hips up, drawing Avon up on his hands and knees. His palm on Avon’s cheek, when he reached forward, tilted Avon’s head so that it wasn’t buried in his arms.

“That’s better,” he murmured. Avon liked the pitch of it, and he loved the slide of Blake’s arms down his sides, the almost petting, repetitive gesture. The way, when Blake’s hands came to his arse and held his cheeks apart, he felt a soft, dry, gentle finger just tracing his entrance. Blake played with him as though Avon were a new toy he had really wanted to get and didn’t want to break. Avon let his eyes close.

Avon always showered, right before coming—he dressed for leave as though it were a date he was particularly keen not to fuck up. So Avon didn’t protest when Blake dipped his tongue into the cleft of his arse. This was actually part of the reason he always showered first. He wanted to encourage this, though he didn’t ask for it.

If Blake aimed to make him incapable of thinking, and thus of asking anything, he could certainly have chosen worse strategies. Blake licked a stripe, then tongued Avon’s entrance, then pushed his tongue _inside_ Avon. Avon slid his legs further apart to accommodate him and struggled not to push back on Blake’s tongue. He knew that from his current position, with his arse in the air, Blake had simply to flick his eyes over to the mirror to see Avon’s parted mouth, his slack and wanton features, the rise and fall of his torso with his ridiculously heavy breathing. He was quite literally panting for it. The thought embarrassed him, and he felt his cheeks start to burn with it, but he couldn’t keep himself from reacting. Blake licked him, flickering then heavy. Avon moaned a little, thrashed—that further embarrassed him, he felt almost _humiliated_. But it had been weeks since the last leave, and two months since Blake had happened to do this, and he couldn’t have pushed Blake away for anything.

Blake pulled back from him, and Avon looked up, seeking Blake’s eyes in the mirror with stupid desperation. “I’m coming right back,” Blake promised, licking his wet lips.

Avon hungrily watched him pull some lube out of the drawer, and shuddered when the first wet finger broached him, slowly sliding in and in until it was buried to the joint. Blake tended to stretch him, every time, as though they were back in the shower room on the London: as though they only had inadequate lube to use and Avon himself was very out of practice. He was careful and deliberate, as though fucking Avon was a momentous decision, and he wouldn’t be rushed. As though he was determined to take his time. Passionate intensity, yes, and determination aplenty, but no urgency: he seemed to feel Avon wasn’t going anywhere. That they had all night. That he was going to make it good, no matter what it took, and nothing was going to interfere with that. Like he wanted to spool it out.

Avon opened his eyes and caught Blake’s expression in the mirror. It was more revealing than it typically was, and far more revealing than Avon had thought it would be: as though Blake had forgotten he too was vulnerable to the device.

The look on his face was almost reverent. Blake loved doing this to him. Loved (judging by the way he swallowed) the helpless hitch of Avon’s hips as Avon pushed back to grind against his knuckles. Loved the way Avon’s body clenched around his fingers.

With some tenderness in his expression, Blake dipped his head again, and Avon gasped as Blake’s tongue lapped around his embedded finger. Blake pushed another finger slowly in and kept tonguing him, and Avon thought for a moment that he’d _have_ to stop Blake, because it was too intense. But the shrieking edge of it passed, and then Blake’s fingers were stroking inside him as Blake’s tongue stroked the surface, and then Blake began slowly pumping his fingers in and out. Avon’s skin pulled at Blake’s fingers, clinging, and Blake mercilessly licked just that sensitive, clinging, stretched skin. A third finger—the same treatment—and Avon knew he was making wretched soft pleading sounds and that his face must be a _wreck_.

Blake pulled back, and Avon opened his eyes. Blake’s expression was full, unreadable.

“What?” Avon asked, demanding his own back. Tense, lest Blake should spoil it.

Blake, to his credit, hesitated only for a moment. “How can you not think you’re worth watching?” he said. “You said this would be awkward, not erotic—How can you _think_ that? You must know how handsome you are.”

Avon looked away, aware that he must look as surprised, as pleased, as embarrassed, as starving for Blake’s praise as he felt. Perhaps his expression was some jumbled, ultimately ugly cocktail.

“It’d be rather narcissistic, if I found _myself_ handsome,” Avon tried. “Even for me.”

He glanced back to see Blake shaking his head—his fingers were moving again, sliding in and out of Avon, deep and slow, almost idly. As though Blake just liked the rhythm and the feel of it.

“It isn’t just that—though that isn’t in dispute,” Blake said, confirming Avon’s handsomeness as absolutely as if he were declaring a specific Federation process obviously corrupt. “It’s your reactions themselves. I think you’re the most responsive person I’ve ever been with. It’s—” He bit off a word, and stroked his free hand down Avon’s back, watching the resultant slight shudder with absorption.

“Look at that,” he breathed, staring down at the path his hand traveled.

Avon worked hard and fast, and by the time Blake looked back up to meet his eyes they didn’t look quite so besotted. Huge and dark and too intense, yes, but not, anymore, as if he might die if Blake said another thing to him.

“Enrapturing,” Blake said, not looking away. “I did say I’d try to be honest. That’s the word I thought.”

All that effort wasted. Avon could see his face was as bad as ever, and worse. And he was staring at Blake, via reflection, right in the eye. He’d never felt so exposed.

“ _God,_ I have to fuck you right now,” Blake said, and no sooner said than his fingers were sliding out and his slick cock was taking their place. There was something to be said for this angle—it allowed deeper penetration and more leverage. You could use it to pound into a partner with a satisfying brutality. But, unfortunately, it necessitated sacrificing a degree of intimacy—in most cases. With the mirror in front of them, Blake had caught and held his eyes. Mesmerized, Avon couldn’t seem to break his gaze. Blake fucked gasps out of him, and Avon watched his own huge, surprised eyes and swollen, blood-flushed lips in the mirror. Watched Blake watching them. Watched Blake enjoying himself. Whatever it cost, this had been a good idea. A good, good idea. Blake loved this so much. He’d had no idea he could give this to Blake.

Avon greedily drank in the expression of pleasure on Blake’s features and realized he could _have more_.

“Now,” Avon said recklessly, “what are you thinking right now?”

“Fucking you is always so good,” Blake said, as though he couldn’t help saying it. “And I love looking at you while I fuck you. You look like you love it. I love your lips trembling because you’re going to come. The way you bite down and fight against it, like you can’t _bear_ it. God, you’re pretty when you come, and I bet you _hate_ that word and resent that it’s true.” Blake paused, and one more thing tumbled out of him. “I want you all the time, all the time.”

Avon regarded him, stunned.

“Come here,” Blake said suddenly, pulling Avon up and back against him.

They were both sitting up on their knees now, Blake still deep in Avon. Blake ran his hand over Avon’s chest and down to his cock and started to pump it hard, continuing to fuck him, latching his lips onto Avon’s neck, sucking at the pulse point and holding Avon’s eyes in the mirror. Avon could see his hair was a mess. He could see Blake’s big, firm hand mercilessly pumping his cock. He could see how this position made him look small, compared to Blake, look dominated and cared for in a way he wanted and despised and was terrified of. He could see Blake’s eyes—absolutely rapt, as promised. Blake’s free hand splayed across his stomach, holding him there, protective and anchoring Avon in place so he could fuck him. Blake’s hips working, crashing into his, his own hips shuddering in response, at the impacts, his cock jerking hungrily up into Blake’s grip. And his own mouth, silently shaping Blake’s name as he came all over Blake’s hand.

He squeezed his eyes shut to come, but opened them again and watched Blake coming in him even as he felt it. He didn’t wipe the yearning look off his face. Blake was probably too distracted to notice it, and possibly, Avon didn’t need to hide it even if he wasn’t.

They slumped down to the bed, Avon’s face still visible in the mirror, and Blake behind him, his arm slung over Avon’s chest.

“Not having sex on the ship was your idea,” Avon said after a moment. “That was how you wanted it.”

Blake’s fingers, which had been idly running over Avon’s skin, stilled.

“It wasn’t,” Blake said, the rumble of his voice vibrating through Avon’s chest. “I tried to get you to—actually just to lie down with me, at that point. It had been a hell of a day, and you said—” Blake’s voice shifted to an Avon-quoting register—unpleasantly nasal, “’I—‘”

As it happened, Avon didn’t particularly care what he’d said.  “Don’t annoy me just yet,” he interrupted Blake. “We have far too much leave ahead of us for that. Though that doesn’t have to be the only time we have, if you’re interested.”

“I could be,” Blake said slowly. “If you were.”

“Well. There we are, then.”

A tense moment passed, and Blake propped himself up on his elbow—the better to see over Avon’s shoulder. He had his mirror angle again. He looked thoughtful—closed off and private.

“And now,” Avon said suddenly, “what are you thinking now?”

“Give me a moment,” Blake said, “I don’t want to say this in a way that annoys you.”

He looked on the verge of making something up—Blake had a couple of tells, though he was generally a good actor—but then he said instead,

“That worked _so well_ , just now. Often we can’t manage to _talk._ Sometimes the way you ask me things is quite matter of fact, and sometimes it’s rather more aggressive.” His lip twisted. They both knew that was an understatement. “I realize I can annoy you, but when it’s the latter, it’s—” Blake paused. Tried again. “When you’re aggressive, I—become unduly defensive. I _shouldn’t_ , perhaps, but nevertheless I _do_.  When I don’t feel safe, I’m not terribly responsive to your ideas, though you’re often making good points. When I feel as though we’re partners, helping one another, I _value_ things I’d otherwise take as insults. I think I could listen to you _better_ if you—” Blake trailed off.

“All right,” Avon said. “I’ll try the other approach.”

Blake goggled at him a little. “You aren’t offended? You don’t think that’s a ludicrous request?”

Avon shrugged. “Why should it be?”

Blake had, actually, just said that he valued Avon’s advice and wanted to take more of it. And Avon could understand being in a more expansive, generous frame of mind if you felt safe. It did wonders for his own humor. If Blake wanted him to try a level tone and to resort to more drastic approaches only when _that_ failed to get results—well, that sounded reasonable enough.

Blake had also suggested that he liked thinking of Avon as a partner, in some sense. And this was the sort of request a partner should feel able to make of him.

“Perhaps I wouldn’t be quite so frustrated and prone to aggression if you included me more at the planning stage,” Avon said, his voice a touch wry.

“You _want_ to be included at that level?” Blake said, seeming honestly surprised.

“Obviously,” Avon said, surprised himself that Blake didn’t see that _yes,_ he wanted to help shape the plan before it got to the point where he was trailing after Blake trying to understand what was going on and _why_ they were doing it and what risks were involved and whether they _could_ be mitigated.

“But you don’t care about that at all,” Blake said. “I can’t _make_ you care. Every time I try and brief you, you respond—”

“I know how I respond,” Avon said shortly, desperately not wanting to hear Blake accuse him of disloyalty or a lack of sympathy at the moment. “However I’m likelier to respond _better_ to a plan I helped shape. I did run Aquitar Computing you know—that was several hundred people. I can _help plan a project_.”

“You didn’t want any part of that when we were talking about going to Saurian—we got to the Liberator and you started—I don’t know,” Blake said, frustrated. “Hell. _I_ thought we were friends.”

Avon hadn’t seen that particular discussion as an actual attempt to talk the matter through while on the move, or a sensible decision to keep the Federation from tracking them easily. But now that he knew Blake better, he was willing to allow for both. He hadn’t been in a responsive frame of mind when it happened. Not long before, Blake had told him that they weren’t fucking on the ship. Between confusion, rejection and sexual frustration, Avon had felt more petulant than he might have liked. And perhaps, if Avon had wanted to _win_ that argument, he shouldn’t have turned it into an attempt to punish and one-up Blake in front of a still fragile, cohering, then-uncertain crew. Blake _had_ responded badly (though to his credit, he’d never shouted at Avon quite like that again—perhaps he’d been honestly surprised Avon would do that to him), but Avon supposed they’d tripped one another up, as with the matter of whether they would have sex on the ship.

“And so we are, after a fashion.” Avon said briskly. It was one of the things they were. _Friends_ typically didn’t have incredibly intimate, overly-cathected sex, as a rule. “Well then. You try and give your present, I’ll try and give mine. Speaking of which, why did you want to do this now?” Avon asked, nodding at the mirror.

Blake—actually blanched a little. Avon watched it in the mirror, and caught himself smiling rather fondly. After the discussion earlier, he elected not to try and stop. Let Blake see that Avon liked him.

“Present’s a rather apropos word,” Blake muttered.

“Don’t be coy, you don’t have the voice for it. You were made to proclaim things, probably.”

Blake rolled his eyes, and didn’t quite look at Avon. “You’re going to think it’s incredibly stupid.”

“Very likely,” Avon said cheerfully. “But tell me anyway.”

“If you _must_ know,” Blake said, all wounded dignity, “it’s my birthday, actually. I—wanted this. As a sort of—” Blake didn’t finish.

“—present to yourself,” Avon murmured. _That_ was flattering. That was delightful, actually.

“Oh shut up,” Blake said, not looking at Avon’s widening grin.

“Come on,” Avon said, standing up and picking up his leggings, “get dressed.”

Blake blinked at him. “Are you throwing me out of my own room over this?”

Avon laughed, and he was surprised to hear that it sounded rather like one of Blake’s better ones.

“We’re going to dinner. We are going to find the best restaurant in this city and patronize it. And then we’re going wherever you were going to go when I was back on teleport duty.”

Blake regarded him, bemused. “You hate going _anywhere_ on leave.”

“That’s not precisely the case,” Avon said, not wanting to get into the complex economics that governed his behavior in light of Blake’s scarcity as a resource. Avon had managed to throw on his clothes by this point, while Blake had managed shoes and trousers and was still buttoning his shirt.

“Are we in a relationship, Blake?”

Blake raised an eyebrow, and regarded him evenly, continuing to work on the buttons. “I don’t know.” He paused and, mindful of his promise, tried again. “I’d like for us to be.”

“Congratulations,” Avon said briskly, tossing Blake his jacket. “So, given that you are my—” he frowned, and Blake read the expression.

“I hate the term ‘boyfriend’,” Blake said.

Avon nodded. “I preferred your previous suggestion, anyway,” he said smoothly. “It would be remiss of me not to take a partner out for the occasion. After all,” he smiled sharply, “it’s not as though we can’t so much as touch each other for the next several weeks.”

“No,” Blake said with a softer smile of his own, “it isn’t.” 

“I like my present,” Avon said crisply, picking up the key card from the table and holding the door for Blake. “I’m not planning on returning it.”

“I’m fond of mine as well,” Blake said. “Your hair’s a wreck, by the way.” And he grinned a little sadistically as Avon frowned and tried to twitch it back into place, having to use the reflective door of the lift for guidance.

Any secrecy about their arrangement would have been spoiled the next day anyway. Vila needed something from Blake, and Avon had answered the door holding a precautionary gun, wearing a bathrobe and a _‘yes?’_ expression.

“Is, er, Blake in?” Vila asked with a cough.

Avon rolled his eyes. “Sleeping off his birthday hangover. I might have gone a little overboard with the champagne.” But Blake was an enthusiastic, cuddly drunk, as it turned out, and Avon didn’t particularly regret his choices. Whether Blake did depended on how bad of a headache he woke up with.

“And you’re staying here, are you?” Vila asked, clearly probing for gossip.

Avon glared at him. “As per every shore leave we’ve had, Vila, yes. Actually check the teleport coordinates you dispatch us down to at some point. They might come in useful. Should you need to rescue us quickly, for example. As is the entire point of teleport duty. Now unless you need Blake badly enough to enjoy his temper if you wake him at present—”

“No no,” Vila held up his hands. “I’m already gone, I’ll try this afternoon.”

Avon returned to bed, slipping off the robe.

“Whozat?” one of the most eloquent speakers of their generation murmured into his pillow.

Avon snorted. “Vila. Wanted something trivial. Dismissed, for the time being.”

“Well done,” Blake said, obviously preparing to go back to sleep. Then he suddenly cracked an eye open. “He knows, then. Do you mind?”

“Them knowing?” Avon asked. “Not in the slightest. Being woken up for trivialities when I’m on leave and in bed with you? _Yes_. But don’t worry, I’ll find some way of making my displeasure felt.”

“Poor Vila,” Blake murmured, falling back asleep now that he knew nothing was poised to bother them presently.

Avon stroked Blake’s hair absently. He hadn’t quite managed to work ‘my partner’ into the conversation, but he’d staked his claim fairly elaborately. _That_ should put an end to on-board speculation about whether he and Blake were an item. And, of course, start a flurry of additional gossip and speculation. But he didn’t mind that, given that he’d finally obtained a satisfactory answer to the question himself.


End file.
